Shout! The Mod Musical

Just when you think you’re safe from jukebox musicals, another one comes along. This week’s questionable entry is Shout!, which calls itself “the mod musical” because it rounds up songs or song snippets associated with such English songbirds of the 1960s as Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, and Lulu. Take it from someone who was there, this 90-minute revue is no mod musical; rather, it resembles a weaker version Hullabaloo and other gone-but-not-forgotten TV variety hours of the era.

The show’s creators, Phillip George and David Lowenstein, clearly thought it would be a cellar full of fun to follow five young female subscribers to a fictional magazine called Shout! as they mature in England’s during the swinging ’60s. The pack is supposed to benefit from reading the publication’s how-to articles and its advice columns by one Gwendolyn Holmes (Carole Shelley is heard but not seen in the role). George, Lowenstein, and Peter Charles Morris — credited along with George for the show’s “mod musings & groovy gab,” which basically consist of a lot of lame jokes — seem to think they have something to say about women forging their way in a decade famous for liberating all sorts of inhibitions. But all they’ve really done is attempted to make a couple dozen strung-together songs appear to be more than that.

The dramatis personae aren’t given names but colors, reflected in the Carnaby Street-styled costumes of Philip Heckman. They’re Yellow (Erin Crosby), Blue (Marie-France Arcilla), Orange (Julie Dingman Evans), Red (Denise Summerford), and Green (Erica Schroeder). Each of these palettes is also supplied with something of a characterization; Green is the slutty one, for example, while Orange is happily married until she discovers that she isn’t. This color-coordinated conceit — accentuated by David Gallo’s set, dizzy with brightly-colored blooms and a nostalgia-provoking shag rug — unfortunately had the effect of making my eyes glaze over.

One problem repeatedly faced by jukebox musicals is that reprising popular songs instantly invites comparison with the original interpreters, and Shout! doesn’t do well under such pressure. Only the strong-piped Crosby, delivering Bobbie Gentry’s “Son of a Preacher Man,” gets within yelling distance of true charisma. If you’re wondering why that very American hit is covered here, it’s because Crosby is supposed to be a transplanted Ohio native gobsmacked by Paul McCartney. (The Burt Bacharach-Hal David song “Wives and Lovers” is also hauled in, but not the team’s more indigenous “Alfie.”)

The other cast members are pretty and have sweet voices, but they aren’t in the same league as Crosby, never mind Springfield or Clark. The ladies are rarely given a break from Lowenstein’s repetitive frug, watusi, and pony-based movements. For the record, the music is played well enough by keyboardists Bradley Vieth and Christopher Stephens, and percussionist Joe Brady. (Vieth did the arrangements.)

Some weird things happen with the show’s not-very-good British accents, including the mispronunciation of the word “scone.” (The British rhyme it with “John.”) Even worse things happen with the decade’s chronology. For example, George, Lowenstein, and Morris seem to think that Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones was released in the late ’60s, but it was released in 1963. They also suggest that Mary Hopkins’ “Those Were the Days” is a 1970s song, but it was actually released in 1968 as one of the first three singles on the Beatles’ Apple Records label.

As anyone who lived through the ’60s is apt to know, the main lyric to the show’s title song –which the five conscientious women get the audience to clap along to — is the gleeful confession, “You make me wanna shout!” But what this reviewer wants to shout about this show is something the creators don’t want to hear.